Because
I explained in my other page what in general "Origamic Architecture" is,
I will not put in an explanation in here and refer to my other page called
Origamic Architecture for this.This page here
is mainly reserved for my own Origamic Architecture designs (buildings).
After having cut and folded cards from patterns of Masahiro Chatani en
Keiko Nakazawa for something like 3 years, I've started designing OA patterns
myself.
I do this manually on graph paper. I primarily designed buildings from
Amsterdam (in the Netherlands) into OA cards for I think there is a big
lack of patterns from these buildings in OA books and also because
Amsterdam buildings have high architectonic value. My first attempt in
designing an OA card has been the formal city hall and what is now the
Royal Palace: "Paleis op de Dam". This Paleis op de Dam was designed by
Jacob Campen and has been built between 1648/65. To design this building
into an OA card I've used an old drawing of the Palace that I've retrieved
from the Amsterdam Gemeente Archief. All of the OA patterns I've made with
the help of drawings and pictures. The pictures that I've used are partly
photo shots made with my camera; partly downloaded from Internet
and partly the pictures were bought by above mentioned Gemeente Archief
in Amsterdam. Above and to the right are two pictures of this first OA
pattern of mine of the Royal Palace
on
the square de Dam. From this first OA design I particularly remember that
it was quite a job to calculate where exactly all the windows had to be
placed in the pattern and when all this was finished, the before mentioned
drawing from the Gemeente Archief that I've used as a help, wasn't all
that precise. So I had to make some adjustments again after the completion
of this Palace pattern. Evidently in this pattern it is most time consuming
to correctly cut out all the windows. It isn't a difficult pattern
to fold at all. It was a fairly simple building to make an OA card out
of so an excellent choice for a first attempt. The "Westerkerk" was the
next Amsterdam building I made an OA pattern of. I especially felt attracted
to the tower of the Westerkerk and that was actually the reason why I choose
to make the church in the first place. The Westerkerk was built between
1620 and 1631 and it was designed by Hendrick de Keyser who is the architect
of much more famous buildings in Amsterdam.

I
decreased this OA pattern of the Westerkerk as much as possible because
the card is much more attractive this way. I do this with most of my OA
designs. But by doing so in this particular pattern, the consequences are
that the 3 crosses from the Amsterdam armorial bearings got a little bit
too small to cut out of the tower. Never the less, I wanted to leave these
3 crosses in

the
pattern to capture the tower as realistically as possible; it now means
that it costs a little bit more concentration and time to cut the crosses
neatly out of the tower. Furthermore in this OA pattern it is difficult
to fold the separate layers of the Westertower, without making half cuts
in the mountain and valley-folds, it can't be done. Mountain- and valley
folds are the folds that have to be made, either on

the front
or the back of an Origamic Architecture card, to be able to fold the card
into shape. To learn how to half cut a mountain- and/or valley fold (also
known as "kiss cuts" in the States) is very difficult for one learns by
experience how deep a half cut has to be made.When one starts out learning
to get this experience in half cutting, a lot of folds will be breaking
down for one has cut too deep. Next I designed an OA card from the
building called "De Waag" formerly known as "St. Antoniespoort". De Waag
was built in 1488 and is the most important remaining medieval building
Amsterdam owns. I really would have been able

to
design the cover that is above the door of De Waag as well - one has a
pavement

there
now a days - and I tried very hard to do so but without success. I just wasn't experienced
enough making

designs
for Origami Architecture cards to make such a cover. Fortunately in an
OA design of a building

I made not
long after De Waag, called "Centraal Station", I was able to make
such a cover after all. The card from De Waag turned out quite fairy-like.
After having made cards from afore mentioned and shown buildings, I was
kind of fed up with these older buildings so I wanted to challenge myself
making an OA design of a more modern Amsterdam building. I choose for the
fairly new built scientific and technological center formerly known as "New Metropolis" (in the year 2000 the name of the building was changed into
"Nemo"),
a hazardous project.
This
fascinating building is designed by Renzo Piano. At first I wasn't very
charmed by this building but this changed dramatically during the progress
of this OA pattern of New Metropolis. The designer of this building deserves
a lot of respect, architectonically it is a tremendously extraordinary
building. I'm very proud of my OA design of this New Metropolis building,
especially I'm proud of the middle section, this part of the design was
very hard to think through. When I began doing this New Metropolis project,
I tried hard to put the roundness of the building into my OA design, but
this seemed to be impossible to do because one side is not equal to the another,
which, by the way, is the extraordinary attraction of this
building. Because it didn't work out to get the roundness of New Metropolis
into my OA pattern, I finally had to decide to make an OA design of the
building the way it looks from a distance. The most difficult part to fold
of this OA pattern are the stairs to the right of the building, this by
far takes up most of the folding time. What goes for other designs goes
for this pattern as well; without making the half cuts to the fold lines
of these stairs it would be practically impossible to fold. Next it was
"Centraal Station" that I made an OA pattern of. After having made
a few attempts at this huge building,

I
decided to make two separate OA designs of it; one pattern of the middle
section and one pattern of the building as a whole. I wanted to do this
so I could make one pattern (the one of the middle section) with a lot
of details and one (the one with the whole building) with lesser

details
for the individual portions of the building are smaller.The card
of this second design however is much larger than the first one so this
way it shows the building as a total. Centraal Station was built between
1881 and 1889 by the famous architect P.J.H. Cuypers.

The total
building is app. 306 meters long and 30 meters deep. Therefore, my OA pattern
of the building as a whole became a very large one as well. It took me
six weeks in total to design this second card of the building. My main
concern was, because the card would be so huge, that it would keep its
sturdiness and would not bent over in the middle, I think I succeed in this. Especially in this pattern of the Centraal Station, it was difficult
to design the cover that is on the left and the right of the building.
Furthermore it is tricky to cut out the very tiny windows that are in this
pattern, especially for they are so close together, but it can be done.
To cut this particular card takes up a very, very long time!
And folding the roofs of some of the little houses to the left and the
right were especially very difficult to do, I tried out a lot
of different kind of papers before I finally got the right paper
that was flexible enough for all the folds to be in correctly. This paper
that was finally right, is called "elephant hide". All the other papers
I had tried out got torn up here and there when some folds were made. However,
all the energy that was put in designing, cutting and folding this pattern,
has been more than worth while for I think it is now one of the most attractive
OA cards I've made so far. When Centraal Station was done, as an exception
I did a foreign building, namely a museum that is situated in Mainz,
and is called Gutenberg.This
Gutenberg museum is the world museum of the typographic art. I designed
this OA pattern because of an ongoing project called "Gutenberg 2000". For more information about
this "Gutenberg 2000" project and about this Gutenberg museum (there is
a little picture of the museum put in this page) I refer to: http://www.gutenberg.de/museum.htm
In this particular pattern the 3 porches, the ornaments of the roofs and
the ornaments that stick out of the left part of the building, were the
most challenging to design. Because of the little windows and because of
the decorations and ornaments, it takes up nothing less than 10 hours to
cut and fold Gutenberg. Because this is way to long when one has to make
more cards than one from this design, I made a variation to this card;
an OA design with lesser detailed windows, so now to cut and fold this
variation takes up "only" 5 hours. When my OA design of Gutenburg was
finished,
I choose another modern building in Amsterdam to make an OA pattern of,
namely Amsterdam's music theater and current city hall "Stopera"
which is located at the Waterlooplein. Wilhelm Holzbauer, an architect
from Austria, designed Stopera.This
was the first time for me that I actually designed an OA card in a round
shape the way I did in this Stopera design. In former OA designs of buildings
that have primarily round shapes, I suggested the roundness of it in my
design, as with Stopera I actually was able to make a round OA pattern.
I also made an OA design of this Stopera building where I designed the
sides of the building diagonal, something that is an exception in Origamic
Architecture patterns. This was incredible difficult and it took me a lot
of time and try outs to come up with these diagonal sides. In principal
I manage to do it but I think it makes the card harder to fold and unfold
so I prefer the OA design that is shown here. More information about the
city hall can be found at the page about Amsterdam that is mentioned at
the end of this page. Last but not least, I will show a picture from a
card made from the so called "ING" building (formerly called NMB). The architect of this ING building is Ton
Alberts. This, in many ways, is a very exceptional building, not in the least because
one of the main demands for the making of the building was that the people
that have to work in this building would have a pleasant sphere of action.The
left picture is a photograph

of
the F part of the ING building from the little book published by ING itself
called: "Anders Bouwen hoofdkantoor ING Bank"

In
particular the triangle addition on the right part of the building was
very difficult to get

right in
this OA pattern.Furthermore it was stressed that the building should be
very economical in energy; due to all kinds of construction this building
uses the energy from the sun, as the natural energy source, as optimal
as possible.This ING building has 10 towers and of course I could not design
a card from all these 10 towers all in one so I had to pick one section
out and that is the F section. Above, as said, left from the OA card, I've
also add a photograph of this F section of the ING building so one can
compare the original building with the OA building.

Thus far this page
of my OA buildings.There is another page created by me which shows pictures from
special cards related to drawings of M.C. Escher: Escherpage.
If you are
interested in OA cards of the great Japanese artists Keiko Nakazawa and
Masahiro Chatani, look at my page Origamic
Architecture and than there is my other page about Origami.
For more information about buildings in Amsterdam and their architects,
I refer to Amsterdam
Heritage, a very worthwhile, interesting, and extensive page with a lot of information about
the history of Amsterdam. I too used some pictures from this site to help
me make some of my OA designs. Thank you very much for your attention
to my page. Reactions to my page are very welcome.